I'm looking for people in the Northern Virginia/ Maryland / Washington DC area, who might be interested in building radio-controlled or robotic all-terrain vehicles that will fight each other using outdoor laser tag type simulated weapons. This would be an outdoor game designed to simulate modern high tech armored warfare, with long range sensing and engagement, stealth, camouflage, cover, and deception. It would also have as a goal to be cheaper at the entry-level to get involved in than paintball or Tamiya infrared type tank combat games.

At the entry-level, a vehicle could simply be a standard R/C truck with a laser tag set-up on it. Perhaps with wireless video target sighting. No restrictions on whether it is a scale military vehicle or not. This could evolve to higher levels of automation, robotics, and advanced sensors as budget and desires permit. Or higher levels of scale modelling of tanks, armored cars, unmanned ground combat vehicles, as desired.

I have built from scratch a high torque 4 wheel drive radio controlled vehicle, so I can help with designing such a beast, not to mention my 28 years in high tech military engineering.

Admin:I remember reading your message at the tank combat site, and thought it was a cool idea. I've been to one of the games, and my impressions were:

1. Those guys have a lot more skill, time, patience than me in building complex mechanical devices, especially the scratch-built track drive systems.2. The time and cost to build the tanks is high, prohibitive for most people.3. Paintball guns add complications to the design - paint-proofing, heavy "armor", size weight, etc. Also restricts where you can have your games.4. Too many restrictions on design - e.g. must be a model of an existing tank, must be a certain size.5. I'd rather spend more time on advanced electronics than mechanics.

My thought was there should be a cheaper, easier way to have a similar kind of outdoor game that also allows for more emphasis on automation, sensors, etc, as in modern weapons systems. My first step was to build a 4-wheel drive vehicle, and this turned out to be a lot simpler than building a tank. Alternatively, people could use standard RC trucks, or maybe better yet, a rock crawler. An IR LED weapon would be smaller, cheaper, and lighter weight, allowing it to be used on an RC truck without having to modify it to carry more weight.

Cooldog:

My 4-wheel drive vehicle uses 4 12-volt Denso right-angle gearhead seat motors ($17 each) attached to 8-inch lawnmower wheels. The rpm is about 160. These motors seem to be available everywhere for some reason. The control system is really simple. The motors are either on or off. LEft and right wheel pairs are independently controlled to get skid steering. The on-off controls are servos connected to Radio Shack 3-position toggle switches. The wiring is really simple. It works very well. The motor is about right for high torque, which is needed for the skid steering, but it's also pretty fast. The speed is more for paintball combat type games than for robotics. For a robot you would probably want less speed. The hard part of building it was attaching the wheels to the motors in a reliable way. I don't have a machine shop to make a decent hub attachment.

I wasn't thinking in terms of holding a competition, although you could think of it that way, I suppose. A simple version might be something like a duel. A vehicle with a long-range sensor scans the horizon for another vehicle. When one appears, he acquires/tracks the target and fires. If he misses, he moves to avoid getting fired upon. The other vehicles spots him and tracks him. Etc. With more vehicles it gets more interesting.

Are you in the DC area? If you are serious, maybe you could post on what you would like to see, and what you think you and your friends could build in a reasonable time and budget. EG, a robot rover or something simpler? Or were you thinking in terms of something to get college credit for?

Cooldog:

Don't have pictures or video, sorry.

Motors are at www.surpluscenter.com, item numbers 5-1566-L and 5-1566-R. There are two types, right-hand-and left-hand versions. You would need two of each. They are going for $14.99. They are listed under Gearmotors/DC Right-angle Gearmotors/Dual.

Alternatively you could use four kiddie car motors, which are about the same price, and may be easier to mount to the wheels. There's a web site on modifying Power Wheels for 4-wheel-drive, radio-control,etc. They have pics and videos. Pretty similar to what I built except they don't use skid steering. They use the existing Power Wheels steering and have to add a steering servo, which adds to the complexity.